updated 09:52 am EDT, Wed July 23, 2014

Developer betas to get more regular updates

The first public beta of OS X Yosemite will be made available on Thursday, July 24, Apple has revealed in a meeting with The Loop's Jim Dalrymple. The public release will be the same code seeded to developers on Monday. To get it, people must sign up for the OS X Beta Program, which is limited to the first million participants.

The developer seed of Yosemite will be updated more frequently than the public beta, since developers need access to the absolute latest code for testing. When updates are available, they'll be pushed through OS X's Software Update mechanism. This includes the final release of Yosemite, due sometime this fall.

In the interim, a Feedback Assistant app will simplify reporting bugs back to Apple, which is the main goal of the Beta Program. Yosemite marks the second time OS X has been opened up to public testing, and the first since the operating system's $30 "public beta" in September 2000.

Update: Apple has confirmed with MacNN that the OS X public beta will indeed go live on July 24, while also revealing that there will be some additional, but unspecified, features enabled in the public beta release not currently available to developers. The public beta, will however, be based on the current OX Yosemite Beta 4 that was seeded to developers earlier this week.

1. Put it on another partition or drive and use it on a copy of your data. There are still bugs, and it will upgrade some of your data (e.g. iTunes and iPhoto libraries) that may not be able to be downgraded back to Mavericks.

2. If you find issues with software running under Yosemite beta, do not give it a negative review. If you have a problem with an app, test it in Mavericks, and contact the developer. Give them a chance to fix it.